Giving Good Directions.

Including a workshop in your community drama workshops schedule about stage directions and exploring the main types of stages or performance spaces will be of benefit to your group in the long term. As your groups develop and grow, you may invite visiting practitioners, tutors, or directors to work with your group. You may also be involved in festivals where it would help your members a great deal to have some understanding of where they are being asked to go and at least know the basic terms of theatre.

Your group may be invited to perform in outside theatres or wish to go out on tour, so, although they may find workshops on stage directions and theatre terms less interesting than some of their other workshops, they will discover how worthwhile they are. Such workshops can be made more interesting if combined with short drama pieces being worked out by your drama group members. They could, in turn, each take on the role of Director.

For the purpose of this workshop, we shall assume that the 'theatre' we are refering to is physically a proscenium, the most commonly used form of theatre today.

The proscenium theatre establishes an architectural fram between the audience and the actors. The frame, or arch, is the window through which the audience views the play. Sometimes a proscenium theatre has a small extension of the stage projecting beyond the frame, into the 'house'. This extension of the stage is referred to as the 'apron'. In front of the proscenium frame, or arch, is the 'orchestra pit'. In some theatres the stage floor is 'trapped'. this means that sections of the floor can be removed or opened to allow movement between the stage and the space below, the 'trap room'.

'Upstage' of the proscenium frame or arch, over the stage, is the 'grid'. This is the structural support for the equipment and machinery used to hang or fly scenery, lights, or other technical elements of a production.

The 'auditorium' in front of the stage is referred to as 'the house'.

'Onstage' refers to any location in view of the audience. 'Offstage' refers to parts of the stage which cannot be viewed by the audience. For example, if an actor is waiting in the 'wings', they are 'Offstage'. 'Offstage' or 'backstage' is also used if a person or object is not on the stage but in a dressing room or in some other part of the building.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic